A sudden ramp up

Hurricane season turned it up a notch in August with Franklin -- the season’s first hurricane -- forming on Aug. 9 before Harvey became the season’s first major hurricane on Aug. 25. Harvey then went on to be the first Category 4 hurricane to make landfall on the U.S. since Charley in 2004.

After slamming into the southern Texas coast, Harvey dropped an estimated 27 trillion gallons of rain over portions of Texas and Louisiana in just six days, producing unprecedented flooding.

And then Irma... Irma became a tropical storm Aug. 30 more than 3,000 miles away from Tampa Bay off the coast of Africa. Six days later, Irma strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane as it made its way across the Atlantic before ripping through the Caribbean.